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Facebook On The Tracks

What is a crampon? Where were horse cars tried for the first time? How punctual were the trains of old times? The answers are right on time, according to the railway guide: in the Open Air Museum!

„The railway was brought about by time and certainly not by you, dear Minister!” (István Széchenyi: Ein Blick, 1858)

The European railway transport is inevitably more than a simple development of technical history. The success of the railway is the success of the bourgeoisie – this is outlined strongly in the Open Air Museum’s exhibition „The Golden Age of Railways – The Modernization of the Country”.

Sloganless

The exhibition lacks – not without bravery – the obligatory epochs of railway history of the Hungarian reform era (1830s-1840s). The great historical outline is provided by an interactive method of practical simplicity: in the middle of the hall a plotting board can be seen presenting the great phases of railway constructions.

After the great motions of the railway constructions the history of the local railways get the chance to reveal themselves to the visitors. The expression „local interest” has a special and significant connotation, since the corruption that surrounded the great state railway constructions, festered in projects of seemingly lesser importance.

Traveling and transporting on the tracks – on 2 levels

Several of the strong points of the exhibition are the enlarged photos presenting the social groups using the traveling opportunities of trains. The experience of traveling on train is put into a

The life of railway men is presented in the exhibition as a society within a society. The exposition rich in objects loses its plasticity for a little while; it will only arrive back with the help of the documentary „The Oldest Railman” and with the presentation of the associations of railway people. Of the four lives presented here mostly the texts reveal their fate.